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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778820">Everything You've Heard is True</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemadguys/pseuds/wemadguys'>wemadguys</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s03e02 Murder and the Maiden, F/M, Introspection, Season/Series 03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:41:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemadguys/pseuds/wemadguys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s only later, when the alarms have sounded and she sprints barefoot toward the perimeter of the base wearing little but Lyle’s coat and an acute sense of panic, that she realizes she’s been played.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lyle Compton/Phryne Fisher, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952428</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Everything You've Heard is True</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I decided to do fictober this year, and I was going to post this first piece last night before it hit midnight in my time zone, but then trump got covid and i had to abandon this to go scream and tweet oops</p>
<p>anyways, i'll probably post two stories today. this first prompt is "wait, come back!" but it's a loose interpretation. i'm actually using phryne's canon "jack, wait!" from 3x02, which has the same energy.</p>
<p>thanks for reading! :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Too much ballast for lift-off,” she tells Lyle, and she thinks she might mean it. Her eyes are wide open to the ways of the world, and it’s been a long time since she’s fallen anywhere; jumping has become much more her style.</p>
<p>But Jack has disrupted her modus operandi. It takes no time at all to be utterly fascinated by him, his grace, his dignity, his quiet authority. His playfulness is a surprise that she finds particularly delicious. It’s an acquired taste, of course, as dry as dust, and it complements her own very well. Yes, she knows right away that Jack is a fine whiskey that needs to be savoured. But so are a lot of men.</p>
<p>To Phryne, working four or five cases together is more than sufficient savouring. She hints at her interest as they go, and he seems to reciprocate. But then, after another case solved, he puts a stop to her little side project of seduction<em>. A marriage is still a marriage.</em> Very well. It’s not like she’s only in it for that. It changes nothing.</p>
<p>In fact, it changes everything, because she lets her guard down with him. She invites him into her home and her life, and he tentatively accepts it. Over drinks in her parlour, they trade barbs and philosophies and thoughts on literature. He proves even more interesting than he first appeared, a possessor of a near-renaissance level of knowledge that rivals her own. He is kind but hardened and cynical in only the best way.</p>
<p>Where her response to the war has been to live her life for fun and passion, his is finding solace in duty and justice. They are not fundamentally dissimilar; she flagrantly flouts convention to prove its triviality and forge a new path for others to follow, and he patrols the line between convention and deviance and does what good he can. They seek the same thing – just on different scales.</p>
<p>And by keeping her at arm’s length, he’s effectively neutralised her upper hand over the situation. She acts; she does not reflect. But Jack will look at her with all the warmth and depth in the world and then immediately turn around and walk away. She is always left in those moments with a feeling so heady and overwhelming she could faint like a demure maiden stood too long in the sun. It forces her to dwell on the sensation. To think about why he walks away. To think about why she lets him.</p>
<p>She may not be a reflective person overall, but she’s never lacked intelligence. She knows the feelings she has for Jack. They are a familiar, a long-dormant muscle waiting to be flexed.</p>
<p>But does she want to flex it?</p>
<p>She’s thought so at many points. After Jack agrees to reconcile with her following their rift, she privately acknowledges that the way the have been carrying on is untenable. Their lives have become intertwined and, though she does an excellent job of pretending otherwise at times, Jack is not the only affected party. There’s nothing for it, she decides. She wants him more than she is scared of wanting him, and she is willing to see it through whenever he’s ready.  It’s a release of sorts to finally admit that to herself.</p>
<p>It’s some time before he catches up.</p>
<p>A sense of dread settles into the pit of her stomach when she sees him move to comfort his ex-wife. It’s one of the first times their different lifestyles have really thrown her. She has never been married, has never for a moment – not even at her most innocent and idealistic – considered joining the institution. And though she has tried to suss it out, she really cannot know what Jack feels for Rosie, what obligations he thinks still apply. When he knocks on her door that night, she isn’t sure that he’s not there to tell her he’s gone back to her. “I’m taking her away for a while,” she imagines him saying in that deep, steady voice, his eyes apologetic but determined. And she knows that she would not begrudge him that, that indeed he would only rise in her esteem.</p>
<p>But that’s not why he comes. He shows up at such a dangerous hour with only ignoble intentions, and it’s familiar, and she’s almost giddy at the very prospect (and though she is a jovial sort, she has never been prone to giddiness).</p>
<p>And of course nothing comes of it.</p>
<p>But she does not want to leave well enough alone. Though they are busy people with full lives, she makes a point to try again with him when it’s convenient. This next time, their pasts once again come between them. Husband-of-16-years Jack worries about being one in “a parade,” and Phryne begins to worry that Jack won’t appreciate what she has to offer him.</p>
<p>They come out of it finally on the same page, or so she thinks, but this most recent case at the air base has made her question that – and everything else as well.</p>
<p>Seeing Lyle is wonderful. One invitation to ride on the man’s motorbike and she’s transported back to that exhilarating plane ride in Madagascar. So seeing Jack right after that, greeting him in front of Lyle, is uncomfortable in the extreme. Lyle only knows her as a fellow adventurer, as a free and independent spirit – which she is. But one of the cornerstones of her independence has always been her sexual and romantic freedom. She and Lyle have always lived in and for the moment only.</p>
<p>Jack is her life, he’s important to her; she has come too far not to recognize that. And, as ungraceful a journey as it’s been, they have come to some sort of understanding. When he walks in and says there’s been a murder, she does want to follow him and find out about the case. And the look on his face makes her feel like she’s done something wrong. It’s worse than simple hurt – it’s an utter lack of surprise, like he expects to find her being disloyal.</p>
<p>Maybe she doesn’t know how to do this after all; maybe her and Jack’s lives are irreconcilable.</p>
<p>The man’s horrid, unbecoming jealousy of Lyle certainly doesn’t help. She has no desire to tolerate it or coddle him, and she tries to get them both to see sense a number of times.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand why you have to dance to his tune.” That sends her over the edge.</p>
<p>By the time she sees Lyle again, she’s beyond frustrated. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever do enough to get Jack to see that she’s loyal to him. And Lyle is there to remind her of everything she most admires about herself – her free spirit, her adventurous nature, the fact that she dances to no one’s tune but her own. Though he does rib her about Jack. “He’s not your usual style.”</p>
<p>She worries that he’s right. It’s long been on her mind. What would have ordinarily been a pleasant reminiscence with an old acquaintance has become fraught with a distasteful possessiveness that does nothing but slow Phryne down. How can she deal with that long-term? How can Jack?</p>
<p>It’s a lot to think about, and Phryne doesn’t much like to reflect; she acts. “Too much ballast for lift-off,” she tells Lyle a moment later, and she thinks she might mean it. Talking to him is making her feel most like the self she knows, the proud, daring, unsentimental creature who lives the life of a lavishly wealthy nomad. She’s happy to drop all her concerns and let the moment take her, and she delights in melting into Lyle’s arms for a romp in the hangar.</p>
<p>It’s only later, when the alarms have been sounded and she runs barefoot toward the perimeter of the base wearing little but Lyle’s coat and an acute sense of panic, that she realizes she’s been played. She gets to Jack and, easy as breathing, moves to stand between him and a veritable firing squad.</p>
<p>Lyle follows soon after. She expects him to call his men off right away, but he doesn’t. He knows that she and Jack are – that she cares for Jack. And yet he stands there and lets his men threaten to shoot him where he stands.</p>
<p>When Jack glances at her painted toes, like pools of blood against the damp leaves, she feels genuinely chagrined for the first time in a long time. Although she has nothing to apologise for, this is certainly not one of her finest moments. As ever, Jack turns to go.</p>
<p>Phryne glances at Lyle, a man who looks just like the arrogant bastard he’s always been. She finds herself thinking then about her future and about her past. Is she, as Lyle would like her to believe, the sum of her experiences? Has she lived too long one way to be able to move forward with Jack in another?</p>
<p>With some effort, Phryne shuts herself off from her whirling thoughts, because, well, she’s not meant to reflect, is she? She acts. She may have let herself fall into this situation, but the only way out is to jump, to run on pure feeling. Tensing her legs in preparation for movement, she realizes that there was only ever one choice.</p>
<p>As ever, she must follow her instincts. Her passion. Her heart. Quick as a flash, desperate words on her lips, she tears out through the hole in the fence.</p>
<p>“Jack, wait!”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title comes from the song "so much love to give" by the glorious sons. </p>
<p>The fictober prompt list I'm using: https://fictober-event.tumblr.com/post/628547358001594368/fictober-event-the-prompts-for-2020</p></blockquote></div></div>
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